HCM CITY — The internet of things (IoT) is growing rapidly world-wide ushering in momentous changes and huge opportunities for businesses, a conference heard in HCM City on June 12.

Leigh Madden, vice president of IT consulting, Asia-Pacific, for Bosch, said across the world billions of devices such as cars and smart phones are already interacting and sharing information, and things are increasingly becoming an active part of the internet.

“Every ‘thing’ in the world can transmit data to the web and communicate with every other ‘thing’ in order to perform a variety of tasks for its owner. On the internet of things, the physical and virtual worlds are fused.”

According to the Gartner, the world’s leading IT research and advisory company, some six billion devices are already connected, and by 2020 this number is expected to exceed 20 billion.

As early as 2020 the IoT market will be worth some US$250 billion, Leigh Madden said.

Bosch has used IoT technology to create smart containers (to monitor food condition during transportation), community-based parking (transmitter vehicles within a community send data about free parking lots as they drive by and a parking area map is created), Kuri, a home robot, smart railway, and others, he said.

At the conference, Bosch exhibited some of its innovations in smart agriculture, connected buildings, factories of the future, and urban mobility.

Mallikarjuna Guru, managing director of Bosch Vietnam, said Việt Nam is in the process of industrialisation and international integration, and IoT provide great opportunities for it to develop its economy as well as industrial sector.

“For some years now, we have steadily expanded our software and engineering expertise and capacity in the areas of connectivity.

“Moving forward, we strive to make HCM City one of the key IoT solutions hubs for Bosch in the Southeast Asia region through our Bosch Software and Engineering R&D centre.”

The German company had organised the first conference on the internet of things in the city last year.

Bosch is a global supplier of technology and services with a presence in the Vietnamese market since 1994.

In the 2017 fiscal year, it recorded over 17 per cent growth in Việt Nam, with consolidated sales reaching $114 million. — VNS